Alone in the Dark Wiki:Article layout guideline

 

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This page contains the Alone in the Dark Wiki's article layout guideline. It describes content organization within articles, i.e. how articles should be structured as well as how standard content and sections should be named and ordered.

Guidelines describe desired etiquette and common practice in the creation, editing and organization of articles on this wiki. Any registered editor is free to edit this page to improve its readability as long as the essence of the article remains unchanged. If you would like to suggest content changes or propose a new policy or guideline, please use the wiki discussion forum. See the policies and guidelines page for an overview of this wiki's policies and guidelines.

On structure

One of the most important parts of wiki editing is how to structure an article. Structure dictates what information the reader reads and when they read it. It can influence what people contribute, where they put it and how it is written. Good structure is likely to produce high quality articles.

Organize sections in an article in a hierarchical structure like you would an outline. Try using a shallow structure rather than a deep one. Having too many nested sections usually leads to a confusing or unreadable article.

Section order and naming

The following table is a short overview of Alone in the Dark Wiki's standard article layout. Its purpose is to provide a quick reference for the correct order and naming of standard layout items. This does not mean every article needs to have all of these layout items. Please note that on this wiki, a headline refers to the title of a section.

yes in the "headline" column means that if you want to include such a layout item, it should have its own headline within the article.

no in the "headline" column means that this layout item should not have a headline.

Standard layout
Layout item	Headline	Explanation
Page management boxes	no	Page management templates are used if you notice that something is out of order with a certain article or section and want to bring it to the attention of other editors or administrators. If the issue affects the whole article, these boxes should be placed at the very top of an article; if only a section is affected, they should be placed just below the headline of the respective section. The only exception are stub templates; see Stub templates below. For a list of page management boxes, please refer to our template overview or directly to Category:Page management templates.
Project tags	no	Projects are joint efforts of editors who work together to improve a set of articles that cover a certain area of interest. Some of these projects have tags or boxes which are placed on the pages which the project affects; these should be placed below the article management boxes.
"For" template	no	{{for}} is used to make a reader aware of other articles they may have been looking for when entering the title of the current page.
Infobox	no	The purpose of infoboxes is to summarize data relating to the article. Infoboxes should appear in the top-right corner of an article. For a list of infobox templates, please refer to our template overview or directly to Category:Infobox templates.
"Games" template	no	{{Games}} should be placed just below the infobox (if there is one). It produces small icons in the top right corner of an article which allow the reader to see "at a glance" what games or sources the article relates to or is based on. The template should be used in every article; almost no exceptions exist.
Lead section	no	Articles should generally start with a lead section which is not more than a few sentences. Its purpose is to provide a short definition or overview of the article itself; after reading it, a reader should know what the article is about. If possible, the article title should be the subject of the first sentence; alternative titles should be mentioned in the lead section as well.
Table of contents (TOC)	no	The table of contents (TOC) will automatically appear in articles with a minimum of four headings, just above the first headline. This behaviour can be changed by using __TOC__ or __NOTOC__. __TOC__ forces a table of contents to appear wherever it is placed in an article, no matter how many headlines the article has. __NOTOC__ results in no table of contents ever being shown.
Article content For information on writing the article itself, see our general editing guidelines.
Behind the scenes	yes	"Behind the scenes" is the place for information relating to game development and cultural references. See Alone in the Dark Wiki:Content policy#Behind the scenes for additional information.
Bugs	yes	Game glitches, short "bugs", relating to the article subject should be here. See Alone in the Dark Wiki:Content policy#Bugs for additional information.
Gallery	yes	If an article contains a lot of images, it is often better to place them in an own gallery section than to have them clutter the article. Please see Help:Gallery on how to use galleries and our image policy.
Videos	yes	If an article contains embedded videos, they are to be placed here. See our video policy for which kind of videos are eligible to be placed in articles.
See also	yes	The purpose of this section is to list links to related topics on this wiki which may not have been linked within the article content.
External links	yes	Links to external (i.e. off-wiki) sites which are not references should be just above "References".
References	yes	If references have been used in an article, {{references}} should be placed here.
Stub templates	no	Stub templates mark an article as being too short to provide more than rudimentary information about a subject. All stub templates can be found in Category:Article Stub templates, only the most specific should be used.
Navboxes	no	Navboxes are navigational aids which allow easy access to other articles in a group the current article belongs to. They should be placed at the end of an article, just above the categories. The most article-specific navboxes should be highest and the least-specific lowest. A list of navboxes can be found in Category:Navbox templates. New navboxes can be constructed with {{Navbox}}.
Categories and interwiki links	no	Categories and interwiki links should be added at the very end of an article. A full list of categories can be found on Special:Categories. For additional information, please see our categorization guideline.

Layouts for specific types of content

There are more detailed standard layouts for certain types of articles. These are:

• Character articles
• Creature articles
• Item articles
• Location articles
• Alone in the Dark Wiki:Article layout guideline/Level article

The ordering and naming for standard sections outlined here applies to these layouts as well. They only contain more detailed instructions for the ordering of the actual article content.

See also

• Alone in the Dark Wiki:Content organization guideline
• Alone in the Dark Wiki:Editing guideline
• Alone in the Dark Wiki:Image and video policy